In February of 1996, R.R. Donnelly & Sons, a publishing company founded in 1960, turned their gas-station-map division MapQuest into the first online consumer mapping web site. Over a decade later MapQuest.com serves up over 1.1 billion maps and routes each month. Of course MapQuest is not alone. In 1998, Microsoft launched the Expedia.com travel site, which included an address and directions finder map (full disclosure: I designed that original Expedia map). Eventually ESRI, Yahoo, Google, and a multitude of others jumped into the online map game. MapQuest was bought by AOL and while still popular is not the dominant mapping site any more. Microsoft’s Expedia maps morphed into MSN Maps and then into it’s latest incarnation called Live Maps.
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